Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
forests, ranging in height from ten to forty metres. Natural stands of teak, rosewood and ma-
hogany were once common features of Laos's deciduous forests, though these much sought-
after hardwoods, considered ideal material for building everything from furniture to the decks
of yachts, have been substantially reduced in number.
Bamboo
, hardly in short supply, thrives in Laos's monsoon climate and appears in more
varieties in Laos than in any other country with the exception of two of Laos's neighbours,
China and Thailand. Growing at astonishing rates during the rainy season, bamboo rules the
understorey of the deciduous forests, surviving in soils too poor for many other types of ve-
getation and dominating secondary forests - those areas where a new generation of plants
has grown up after forest has been stripped bare by swidden agriculture, rampant logging
or the harsh excesses of chemical defoliants. Flexible bamboo is used by the Lao for mak-
ing everything from houses to Laos's national musical instrument, the
khaen
, while bamboo
shoots find their way into a variety of Lao dishes. Other, less common forest types in Laos
include dry dipterocarp forests, noteworthy for their more open canopies and found along the
arid plateaus of southern Laos; and rare old growth pine forests and semi-evergreen and hill
evergreen forests, the latter soaked by frequent rainfall and possessing moss-covered forest
floors and dense undergrowth.
Conservation zones and wetlands
In the early 1990s, the government of Laos established a system of
National Biodiversity
Conservation Areas
throughout the country, which put under protection more than twelve
percent of the country's total land area, one of the highest ratios in the world. However, that
has not stopped the Lao government from leasing logging and mining concessions within
NBCAs. Forests have been particularly damaged in the south along the Vietnamese border -
where until recently never-before-seen species were turning up - and in the northeast.
As yet only parts of the conservation areas are accessible and open for tourism - such as
the caves of the Khammouane Limestone NBCA near Thakhek; most are well off the beaten
track. A survey of some of the more interesting areas follows.
Southern Laos
Flush against the Vietnam border in Khammouane and Bolikhamxai provinces and to the
south of Lak Xao, the
Nakai-Nam Theun
is without question one of the world's more im-
portant biodiversity areas. Indeed, many of the last large mammals to be discovered or redis-
covered worldwide inhabit this area. A lost world of evergreen forests, savanna and jagged,
mist-shrouded peaks, the Nakai-Nam Theun is one of the richest wildlife and forest areas re-
maining in Southeast Asia. It is best known for the discovery of the saola, a large mammal
resembling a shaggy brown and white deer with spindly horns, and the giant-antlered munt-
jac and the black muntjac, as well as the rediscovery of the Indochinese warty pig.
